We had a great turnout for our Movie night-- we showed Yogi Bear- it came out 3 days before movie night-- so most hadn't seen it at home yet- we had 104 parents and kids show up-- we charged 1.00 per person to get a raffle ticket and sold concessions (popcorn, drinks, ice cream bars left from our fair-, small candy, glow bracelets.... we had a lot of fun, kids liked the movie a alot. We show our movies on friday night-- doors open at 6:30pm and movie starts no later than 7:00pm so families are heading home by 8:30pm-- we have 4-5 volunteers for this event-- plenty -- 2 at the door and 2-3 for concessions-- popcorn is our big nemesis as well- we can never pop enough early on- thinking about asking the theatre to donate a large bag of per-popped - they have done it in the past- so know it's possible.

We did find over the years that showing a movie that's just been released is a lot better than one that's been out for a while and we try to find generic ones-- no boy geared like Ninja turtles or girl geared- like Barbie ... it's been great -- will have one more before the year is out to clean out the closet-- this is a great event to sell off all your loss candy and small prizes from events through the year.

We hosted our 1st movie night in February, it was a huge success! Thanks to this site and all the great info. all the parents provide, we managed to pull it off. Our parents are asking when the next one will be, we keep saying in the fall, they want one now. We sold pizza, sodas, and candy, and gave away free popcorn to all the families... only problem, we could not keep up with the popcorn. Only advise I can give is if you plan on popping your own popcorn, our PTO has purchased a machine from Sams, start popping it early! We started about 1/2 hour early and it was not enough, we should of started at least 1 hour before and maybe put it in clear plastic bags. We had all families vote for the movie in advance, advertised it in our newlsetter and put up a display in the front office. We used the awesome form that is on this site for the ballott and pre-order for pizzas etc. It worked out awesome! Thanks PTO Today for helping us pull off a successful movie night!!

Donna-
1)We have found that Friday nights draw our biggest crowds- interested in hearing what other groups say.

2)Set up typically takes about an hour- we have tear down down to abt 45 minutes. We turn music on and ask families to do a quick clean up before they leave. A lot help.
3)We do it with around 8 volunteers. Sometimes we get hs kids to help.

4).We make an announcemnent in the beginning about the conduct that is expected. We ask paeents to take the kids out if they are disrupting the movie. We also allow the kids in the gym ahead of time which is a great way to let them blow off steam before the movie.

5)We don't offer a break- most movies we chose are only a little over a hour.

6)We are doing a movie night end of February and started putting things in our newsletter already. We promote heavily the 2 weeks before - we find that if we get the kids excited about it they will bug their parents to come.

I am loving this thread! So many great ideas. Our PTSA is for a middle school. Any special considerations for that age? We are planning on providing one hot dog meal free to the kids and each additional one will be $1.

This sounds like a great idea. I have a couple of questions:
1. what day of the week and time was best for your movie night?
2. how long did it take you to set up/clean?
3. how many volunteers did you need?
4. how did you deal with rambunctious kids?
5. did you offer a break and how far into the movie?
6. how far in advance did you start promoting the movie night?

Can't wait to converse with my fellow parents and share this idea.

This is a family fun night for us-- we hold 2 a year- one in December with our SAnta's work shop and 1 in may to close out our fundraising year....
we have always had a great turnout-- we sell glow-bracelets, drinks, popcorn, and cany all under 50 cents each- so that a family can come out and have a great time without costing a lot of money....
We had raffled off the movie we are showing as well as gift baskets in the past-- we charge $1.00 per person and they get a raffle ticket for that---